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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25342255">Hostage Situation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurae/pseuds/Aurae'>Aurae</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ben Solo Has Issues, Dark, Gen, Horror Elements, Hostage Situations, Kid Fic, Kidnapping, Multifandom Horror Exchange 2020, New Republic Politics (Star Wars), POV Alternating, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Dark Side of the Force</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:08:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,127</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25342255</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurae/pseuds/Aurae</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Political protests convulse the New Republic capitol. In the confusion, a nine-year-old Ben Solo is kidnapped, his captors planning to use him as leverage against his mother, Senator Leia Organa.</p><p>Meanwhile, a mysterious, sinister presence has taken a troubling interest in Ben…</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Leia Organa &amp; Ben Solo | Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Hostage Situation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/badritual/gifts">badritual</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The live holojournalist broadcast was riveting.</p><p>“New Republic out! Free Eriadu! New Republic out! Free Eriadu!” the demonstrators chanted. They looked to be a combination of human and Rodian, and there were a decent number of them. Most wore masks to conceal their identities from the news cameras.</p><p>“Demonstrators have assembled outside the Senate House to protest the expected ratification of the Post-Imperial Environmental Restoration Act after a vote from the full senate late this evening,” a reporter said in voiceover. “Although the bill is popular in the Core, it is controversial on many of the manufacturing worlds of the Outer Rim.”</p><p>“The offworlders started coming <em>en masse</em> after the Emperor was assassinat—I mean <em>executed</em>. Then the factories started closing, and now there’s no work for honest Eriaduans anymore. This isn’t about politics or political affiliation. This is about how we’ve been forgotten…and guess what? We’re sick and fucking tired of it!” one of the demonstrators yelled. A human woman.</p><p>“That’s right!” another demonstrator said. This one was a Rodian, probably male. “We just want our homeworld back, and we’ll take it back if we goddamn have to. Free Eriadu!”</p><p>Ben Solo leaned in closer to the holoproj image and frowned. He felt sorry for the demonstrators. Sure, planetary ecological restoration was important, but what did it matter if people were too poor, hopeless, and miserable to appreciate their pristine surroundings? The Eriaduans just wanted to be free, right? To decide themselves the fate of their own planet? Wasn’t that what Mom and Dad had wanted too, back when they fought their war against the Empire?</p><p><em>You really ought to go and help those good people out,</em> the voice in Ben’s head said.</p><p>“But what can <em>I</em> do?” Ben asked aloud to the empty apartment.</p><p>The voice in Ben’s head offered no reply. Ben sighed. He’d been suspended from school yet again—picking fights with classmates—and that meant another week home alone while Dad was away doing who knew what and Mom put in too many hours at the office, leaving Ben himself with nothing to do besides pace the floor and yell futilely at the holonet. Only nine years old—what a glamorous life this son of two Living Legends of the Galactic Civil War was living!</p><p><em>You sit restlessly on the sidelines when you could be joining the fight,</em> the voice in Ben’s head said.</p><p>Fight? What fight? The protest going on outside the Senate House? Ben rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Yeah, he could do that. It was a ten-minute walk, max, and he could shout <em>Free Eriadu! </em>slogans with the best of them. Okay, yeah, why not? He’d be in the thick of things, the noise and the energy. That had to be better than shouting from the sidelines.</p><p>Ben keyed himself out of the apartment and took off into the mild Hanna City morning at a loping jog. He hadn’t bothered leaving his mom a message; she wouldn’t receive it before the protest was over and done with, anyway.</p><p>No one would even know he’d gone.</p><p>***</p><p>“I would beg you to reconsider your position. With your influence, we could have a very different outcome.”</p><p>Senator Leia Organa ground her teeth together. <em>It’s not his fault,</em> she reminded herself. <em>It’s </em>your<em> problem, not his. Nothing gives you the right to take out your problems on him.</em></p><p>Problem was, Ando spoke with the kind of affected faux-Core accent that had a tendency to give Leia traumatic flashbacks: flashbacks to her youth, to torture and captivity, to the first Death Star. The destruction of Alderaan. Vader. And <em>Tarkin</em>.</p><p>No, it wasn’t the good Senator from Eriadu’s fault that he was born and raised on the same planet that also gave the galaxy the now deceased Governor Wilhuff Tarkin. The Eriaduan accent was the Eriaduan accent, and it would be uncharitable to fault Ando for speaking in the style of the homeworld he represented in the New Republic Senate. Still. Leia struggled not to make the obvious association—especially in light of the current circumstances.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Senator Ando,” she said, “but the science is clear. In the twenty-three years of Palpatine’s Empire, 3.96% of the total known life-supporting territory in the galaxy was rendered permanently uninhabitable by unregulated industrial exploitation. The stories out of the Kuat mines and the moons of Corellia have already gone down in infamy, but they are just the beginning. The Empire’s short-term gain was the galaxy’s eternal loss. Our homeworlds don’t just belong to us”—Leia thought of lost Alderaan, and she thought of her beloved son—“they belong to the peoples who come after us.”</p><p>“Senator Organa, I would remind you that I was not elected to my Senate seat by the peoples who come after us. I was elected by the people on Eriadu <em>now</em>, and my people are angry <em>now</em>. See?” Ando flicked on the nearest holoproj, already tuned to a live feed of the raucous demonstrators outside the Senate House. “The New Republic has regulated planetary industry nine-tenths of the way out of existence, and the thriving communities they once supported have been hollowed out and broken. Real Eriaduans are angry. Pass PIERA, and you might as well deal the killing blow yourself.”</p><p>Leia was unmoved. “Senator, I have seen the opinion polls, and support for PIERA on Eriadu has had consistent, clear majorities. So please do not try to convince me that the protest outside is some bottom up groundswell, some people’s revolution in the name of unmitigated environmental exploitation. I know who has been stoking this animosity behind the scenes. <em>I know who has been bankrolling th</em>—”</p><p>Something deep inside of Leia twanged. Her pulse quickened, a presentiment of danger. She looked more closely at the holofeed and saw that the demonstrators were brawling. No, not brawling. Ganging up on a single individual, a child. A child who had been knocked unconscious and was being dragged away as she watched. No, it wasn’t just any child—</p><p>Ben. Her<em> son.</em></p><p>Ando’s wrist comm chimed. “Pardon me…if you’ll give me a moment, I need to take this…” He read the message slowly. And read it again. Read it a third time. Then mouth hard, eyes like chips of dry ice, he turned to Leia, who, with a sinking feeling, suspected she already knew exactly what he was going to say next.</p><p>***</p><p>Ben’s head was pounding. An entire battalion of stormtroopers was marching in formation across the inside of his skull. He squeezed his eyes shut reflexively in a futile attempt to ward off the pain and groaned. What had happened to him? He remembered being at the protest when a fight had broken out, and he hadn’t been able to escape the crush of violence closing in on him from all sides…but then? Nothing. Had someone struck him? Was that why his head hurt so much? Why couldn’t he seem to move his limbs? Dammit, why couldn’t he remember…?!</p><p><em>You must ignore the pain and focus on your surroundings</em>, the voice in Ben’s head said.</p><p>Ben groaned again and forced his eyes open. His vision was tinted blue-gray—a ray shield, he realized, imprisoning him within—and his surroundings, a dark, windowless chamber, were unfamiliar. The three beings with him in the chamber, one female Rodian and two male humans, were also unfamiliar. They were engrossed in conversation with one another and not paying any attention to Ben. He blinked to try to clear his headache and listened in on what they were saying.</p><p>“Organa has not acceded to our demands,” the Rodian said. She sounded Eriaduan. “Dieter says she’s flatly refused to negotiate.”</p><p>“Dieter is an imbecile. ‘Senator Organa can be persuaded to reverse her position on Eriadu,’ he said. ‘It’ll be easy. We’ll take her precious son hostage and use him as leverage,’ he said. Bloody politicians! We should never have listened to him,” one of the humans growled. He also sounded Eriaduan.</p><p>Ben trembled with fear or anger, he wasn’t certain which. Possibly both. His captors’ Eriaduan accent combined with the mention of the name “Dieter”—he was only been nine years old, yes, that was true, but he understood perfectly well what had happened: He, Ben Solo, had been kidnapped and was being used to blackmail his mother so that she would change her vote endorsing PIERA. Senator Dieter Ando of Eriadu was the mastermind behind the scheme. And his mother, true to form, had refused to play ball. Senator Leia Organa would not sacrifice her principles to save her son. Politics trumped progeny.</p><p><em>You’ve been well and truly abandoned,</em> the voice inside Ben’s head said. <em>You have only yourself to rely upon</em>.</p><p>Ben trembled harder. What he was feeling was definitely anger. Incandescent, white-hot, reason-destroying <em>rage</em>. He was all alone. He’d been abandoned. His mother had abandoned. Him. Him! Ben Solo! Her <em>son</em>!!</p><p>“So what do we do with the brat?” the other human asked, oblivious to the maelstrom churn of Ben’s emotions.</p><p>The Rodian’s mouth puckered with distaste. “What do <em>you </em>think? We’ll have to dispose of him. Quietly.”</p><p><em>Your chance to free yourself is nigh. Prepare yourself,</em> the voice in Ben’s head said.</p><p>Ben went limp, feigning woozy semi-consciousness. His heart raced; his mouth tasted metallic, of anger evolving into hate. The Force itself seemed to expand and contract with each of Ben’s furious breaths, growing hotter, growing stronger with each passing second. Through eyes narrowed into slits, he saw the three faces of his captors, two human and one Rodian, turn to face him…</p><p>…the two humans stepped forward, blasters pointed at Ben…</p><p>…the Rodian flipped a switch, deactivating the ray shield…</p><p>…Ben’s body tilted forwards, freed of its restraints, and began its fall…</p><p>…and the universe <em>exploded</em>.</p><p>***</p><p>“He’s only a little boy, and he was <em>scared</em>, Leia,” Luke said, low and soothing. “The training will teach him to control his powers. After he’s been trained, this won’t ever happen again. I promise.”</p><p>Leia closed her eyes and focused on her breath. Her brother radiated both compassion and supreme confidence. And of course she felt the gentle warmth of his love. For her, for Ben. She could sense not even the slightest anxiety in him.</p><p>Since Ben’s rescue four days prior, Leia had felt nothing <em>but</em> anxiety. Ando had been a rank amateur—unbeknownst to him, New Republic Security Services had been secretly monitoring his comms <em>for months</em>. She’d been told he would try to blackmail her. The only unanswered question regarded what leverage they’d planned to use. Which, when the time came, had turned out to be her son. In any event, it’d been simplicity itself for Leia to refuse his demands and then wait for him to comm the Ben’s kidnappers for an update, the sending direction of the link revealing their location. She’d gone to that underground bunker to rescue Ben herself.</p><p>“When will you begin?” she asked. She did not open her eyes.</p><p>“As soon as you’ll allow. Immediately.”</p><p>The horrors of the week replayed on the insides of Leia’s eyelids. Her son, head thrown back and shrieking as permacrete walls cracked and buckled inwards, as the bodies of three beings, two humans and one Rodian, levitating in midair, twisted and re-twisted and re-twisted into a grotesque series of unnatural shapes. Leia would never forget the wet, tearing sounds of skin and muscles and ligaments, the popping of dislocated joints, the cracking of breaking bones… And they were still alive, still conscious, gods help them… Leia would never forget their hopeless, pleading eyes…</p><p>At least they’d survived. It was more than could be said of Ando, who’d been found dead in his Senatorial office the next day. He’d hanged himself to escape justice.</p><p>“He’ll be fine. You’ll see,” Luke said. He wrapped his arms around her.</p><p>Leia yielded to the embrace and allowed herself to be comforted. She wanted to believe him. She really, really did. But Luke hadn’t felt the darkness, the sickening, all-encompassing darkness swirling around Ben. Pollution. Corruption. It had felt almost <em>alive</em>, its energies vibrant, fueled by Ben’s emotions, and she would’ve sworn she’d heard laughter—cruel, gleeful <em>laughter</em>… She had never felt so helpless, so emptied of hope, and the emotion terrified her. Why had Ben gone to the protest in the first place? And how had the kidnappers known that he would be there? She didn’t understand. Yes, there was something, something she was missing—something they were both missing—but no matter how hard she tried, to compel herself to just <em>see</em>, it just wouldn’t come into clear view. “I trust you, Luke,” she said instead.</p><p>Luke stroked the top of her head tenderly. “Yes, that’s right. Everything will be okay.”</p><p> </p><p>END</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Posted to the exchange on July 17, 2020.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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